Abstract
Situated within a historical materialist understanding of social transformation and deploying many insights from Antonio Gramsci, a crucial break with mainstream International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE) approaches emerged in the early 1980s in the work of Robert Cox.1 This provided a key inspiration for the emergence of what became known, along with a few other names, as an identifiable ‘neo-Gramscian’ literature of IR/IPE by the 1990s.2 While our own work could be identified as ‘neo-Gramscian’ in this respect,3 a key limitation of this otherwise highly significant body of scholarship was the place within it of Antonio Gramsci himself. There are two key reasons for our dissatisfaction: (1) the way in which many of Gramsci’s key insights on the international were downplayed; and (2) the manner of the critique of the neo-Gramscian literature which tended to engage not with Gramsci but those claiming to be inspired by him. As such, the case for Gramsci’s relevance still requires more work, not least because placing Gramsci at the center of our approach entails a research agenda which is distinctive compared to earlier frameworks. More provocatively, this chapter shows that a ‘Gramscian’ rather than ‘neo-Gramscian’ way of thinking is more appropriate, both in general terms and when considering the current era.4 While we do not want to claim that Gramsci simply has the answers to our questions, the argument below shows that there is still plenty of unrealized potential within IR/IPE that could be developed via Gramsci’s writings.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Robert W. Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,’ Millennium 10 (1981), 126–55;
Robert W. Cox, ‘Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method,’ Millennium 12 (1983), 162–75;
see also Robert W. Cox (with Timothy J. Sinclair) Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
For example, see: Stephen Gill, ed., Gramsci, Historical Materialism and International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993);
Mark Rupert, Producing Hegemony: The Politics of Mass Production and American Global Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
For example, Andreas Bieler and Adam D. Morton, eds., Social Forces in the Making of the New Europe: The Restructuring of European Social Relations in the Global Political Economy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001);
Ian Bruff, ‘Making Sense of the Globalisation Debate when Engaging in Political Economy Analysis,’ British Journal of Politics & International Relations 7 (2005), 261–80.
See also Stuart Hall, ‘Gramsci and Us,’ in Roger Simon, Gramsci’s Political Thought: An Introduction (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1991), 114–30.
Robert W. Cox, Production, Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 1.
See various chapters in Robert O. Keohane, ed., After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), 181.
For example, Stephen Gill, ‘Globalisation, Market Civilisation and Disciplinary Neoliberalism,’ Millennium 24 (1995), 399–423;
Henk Overbeek, ‘Transnational Class Formation and Concepts of Control: Towards a Genealogy of the Amsterdam Project in International Political Economy,’ Journal of International Relations and Development 7 (2004), 113–41.
For example, Joseph Femia, ‘Gramsci, Machiavelli and International Relations,’ Political Quarterly 76 (2005), 341–9.
Randall D. Germain and Michael Kenny, ‘Engaging Gramsci: International Relations Theory and the New Gramscians,’ Review of International Studies 24 (1998), 13.
For a critique of austere historicism, see Adam D. Morton, Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2007), 24–36.
Adam D. Morton, ‘Waiting for Gramsci: State Formation, Passive Revolution and the International,’ Millennium 35 (2007), 597–621;
Mark McNally, ‘Gramsci’s Internationalism, the National-Popular and the Alternative Globalisation Movement,’ in Gramsci and Global Politics: Hegemony and Resistance, ed. Mark McNally and John Schwarzmantel (London: Routledge, 2009), 58–75;
Ian Bruff, ‘European Varieties of Capitalism and the International,’ European Journal of International Relations 16 (2010), 615–38.
Peter Ives and Nicola Short, ‘On Gramsci and the International: A Textual Analysis,’ Review of International Studies 39 (2013), 622 (added emphasis).
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, ed. David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, trans. William Boelhower (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985), 181.
Adam D. Morton, Revolution and State in Modern Mexico: The Political Economy of Uneven Development (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). Updated edition.
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Vol. II, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), N4, §60, 233.
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Vol. I, ed. Joseph A. Buttigieg and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg and Antonio Callari (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), N1, §44, 151.
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Political Writings, 1910–1920, ed. Quintin Hoare and trans. John Matthews (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977), 69.
Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, trans. John. G. Wright (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970), 19–20.
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Vol. III, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), N8, §25, 252.
See Adam D. Morton, ‘The Limits of Sociological Marxism?’ Historical Materialism 21 (2013), 129–58.
Kees van der Pijl, Transnational Classes and International Relations (London: Routledge, 1998), 64–83.
Andreas Bieler, Ian Bruff and Adam D. Morton, ‘Acorns and Fruit: From Totalisation to Periodisation in the Critique of Capitalism,’ Capital & Class 34 (2010), 25–37.
William I. Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004), 4.
Andreas Bieler, Ingemar Lindberg and Werner Sauerborn, ‘After Thirty Years of Deadlock: Labour’s Possible Strategies in the New Global Order,’ Globalizations 7 (2010), 249–53.
Andreas Bieler, Ingemar Lindberg and Devan Pillay, ‘What Future Strategy for the Global Working Class? The Need for a New Historical Subject,’ in Labour and the Challenges of Globalization: What Prospects for Transnational Solidarity?, ed. Andreas Bieler, Ingemar Lindberg and Devan Pillay (London: Pluto Press, 2008), 272.
Bastiaan van Apeldoorn, Transnational Capitalism and the Struggle over European Integration (London: Routledge, 2002).
Mark S. Anner, Solidarity Transformed: Labour Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 130.
Roland Erne, European Unions: Labour’s Quest for a Transnational Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 90–4.
Andreas Bieler, ‘Labour, New Social Movements and the Resistance to Neoliberal Restructuring in Europe,’ New Political Economy 16 (2011), 163–83.
See, for example, Neil Brenner, Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, ‘Variegated Neoliberalism: Geographies, Modalities, Pathways,’ Global Networks 10 (2010), 182–222.
Ian Bruff, ‘Overcoming the State/Market Dichotomy,’ in Critical International Political Economy: Dialogue, Debate and Dissensus, ed. Stuart Shields, Ian Bruff and Huw Macartney (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 80–98.
Stuart Hall, ‘Popular-Democratic vs. Authoritarian Populism: Two Ways of “Taking Democracy Seriously,”’ in Marxism and Democracy, ed. Alan Hunt (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1980), 173.
For more on authoritarian neoliberalism, see Ian Bruff, ‘The Rise of Authoritarian Neoliberalism,’ Rethinking Marxism 26 (2014), 113–29.
Peter D. Thomas, The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 161–7;
Antonio Gramsci, Further Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Derek Boothman (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1995), 15.
See also Ian Bruff, Culture and Consensus in European Varieties of Capitalism: A ‘Common Sense’ Analysis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
See also Marcus Green and Peter Ives, ‘Subalternity and Language: Overcoming the Fragmentation of Common Sense,’ Historical Materialism 17 (2009), 3–30.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2015 Andreas Bieler , Ian Bruff and Adam David Morton
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bieler, A., Bruff, I., Morton, A.D. (2015). Gramsci and ‘the International’: Past, Present and Future. In: McNally, M. (eds) Antonio Gramsci. Critical Explorations in Contemporary Political Thought. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334183_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137334183_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-55365-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33418-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political Science CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)